


A Familiar Paradise

by Naya



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Era, F/M, M/M, Merthur - Freeform, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 19:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naya/pseuds/Naya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Take my magic!” Merlin shouts, standing in front of the lake. </p><p>Or, the one in which Merlin hopes and waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Familiar Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> First published work on here! Well, this is scary.  
> I hope you guys like it, and that it makes you feel something. 
> 
> Title inspired by the song "I've loved you before", by Melissa Etheridge.
> 
> UPDATE: A friend of mine was kind enough to point out some errors I’d made. I apologize for that! But I changed them and I also changed some other things-- sorry about that, too. I just never seem to be satisfied with anything. But anyway! I don’t think I’ll change anything else, so have a go at reading and enjoy :)

“Thank you,” says Arthur, and Merlin’s life goes away with his last breath. 

***

He screams, and screams and screams and _screams_ until his throat feels like sand and he can’t talk anymore, and Arthur’s corpse floats away on the boat, getting lost in the fog and taking everything with him.

Merlin can’t bring himself to leave until the next day.

***

He returns to Camelot about a week later, and the first person he sees is Gwen. She’s alone in the Throne Room, looking out the large window, distant and absent. She's not wearing her crown.

He announces his presence with a faint cough, and her expression is one of total shock when she turns around to find him there.

He supposes she has a lot of reasons. Beginning with the fact that he must look like a walking terror.

And when her hand flies to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears, he expects her to yell at him. To grab him by the arms and shake him. Hit him. Execute him.

He expects everything except what she does, which is rushing towards him and wrapping her arms around him in a fierce hug that does nothing to hide the way her whole body shakes.

“ _Merlin_ ,” she says, her voice quavering. "Thank you for coming back.” 

And as Merlin hugs her back and they both sob and cry into each other’s shoulders, he thinks that of course Gwen would still be the same.

Of course.

***

When he walks into Gaius’ chambers, the man is waiting for him with a watery smile…

…and a bowl of his favourite meal in one hand.

Merlin closes the door with a loud bang and _runs_ , not caring about the bowl crashing onto the ground as he clings onto Gaius’ welcoming arms, barely holding back the tears as the old man pats him on the back.

“It’s good to have you back, my lad,” Gaius says. Merlin only closes his eyes.

***

"Take my magic!" Merlin shouts, standing in front of the lake.

It’s been three months.

_Three months._

“Take it!” He yells again, kicking a rock and hearing the way it splashes on the water. The wind is strong today even though the sun is high and early in the sky, and Merlin wants to dissolve into a million pieces and fly away with the wind. If only that would stop the _pain_.

“My magic! My power in exchange for him!" 

For him. For Arthur.

_My Arthur._

He keeps shouting, feeling broken and crazed, and promptly stumbles on a branch in his haste to get to the lake. He cries out, and the ground is hard and painful under his knees. His vision blurs, and he feels so helpless and insignificant, so pathetically _useless_ as the tears come flooding down his face, a shattering sob breaking what little control he had over himself.

“Take it,” he whispers, curling in on himself on the ground, shaking with how cold he feels. “Please,” he sobs into the earth.

But even though he waits until there’s no sun in the sky and his bones ache from the chill and the unforgiving hard ground, no one ever answers.

***

When it becomes obvious that his magic won’t do, he stops offering it.

He starts offering his own life, instead.

***

That doesn’t work, either.

***

It probably takes him longer than what would’ve been wise, but eventually Merlin stops offering anything, and starts waiting.

Years pass by, and with them, his friends and family go, too. 

Finding out about Gwaine's death was like a punch to the gut, and after that, he could never quite look at Percival in the eye. But if there's something Merlin's sure about is that Gwaine wouldn't have wanted them to remember him with sadness, and it is that thought that makes it a little easier to bear.   

Gwen and Leon die together, asleep on their royal bed after fifteen years of marriage (five years after Arthur’s death). They never had any children, but Leon had a cousin somewhere in the land and he would be the heir to the throne— Merlin doesn’t really care. As soon as they’re gone, after three years of Gaius’ and Hunith’s departure and Percival’s death in battle, Merlin is ready to leave Camelot.

It’s way too soon that he starts to forget their faces. And he panics. But thankfully, he finds – in a desperate night of hurting and loneliness – a spell that allows him to recall memories with even the slightest details. It's not nearly as comforting as he'd hoped it would be, but it's enough to keep him going. 

He doesn’t use it for Arthur, though— he doesn’t need to.

***

More than once he tries to come up with a way to travel in time. If he can stop it, he tells himself, there must be a way to go back.

But, of course, he can never find it.

***

And so it goes on. Merlin ages, but his face never shows it unless he wants it to, even if he feels it in every breath he takes, in every crack of his old, ancient bones. But it is that ability of changing into what he pleases that makes it possible for him to stay in one place for long enough not to feel like a wanderer, altering his appearance as years go by.   

***

He was always awful at lying but, somehow, he becomes the perfect actor.

After Camelot is nothing but a distant memory and legends about his friends and himself start to pass around (and seriously-- some of them are just ridiculous), he interprets the role of a farmer, and people in his village claim that his fruits and vegetables are the best in the market.

He sticks to being a farmer for at least three more lifetimes, until it becomes boring. Then he just does whatever he finds interesting.

And so he becomes a priest, a teacher, a cook— even a Lord, once. But he doesn’t like it.

Even after so much time, his destiny remains to serve, not to be served.

***

Centuries go on, and while the world goes through both years of splendour and hunger and wars, he never sees anyone again. But he hopes.

He _hopes_ with every fibre of his being that maybe, just maybe, _this_ time would be it.

He would see Gaius, his _Mum_. His friends.

He misses Gwen so much that it physically hurts. Gwaine’s voice and Lancelot's gentle smiles have never seemed so necessary before. He even misses the other knights, who he was never as close with. But they were friends. They were _family_.

Not a second passes that he doesn’t think of Arthur.

But Merlin doesn’t find them, not once. And hope begins to fade away.

***

Until year 2012.

***

This time, Merlin is a painter.

He wouldn’t know what to tell anyone if they asked how he ended up doing just that. He simply… did. He found something in the canvas, in the way the brush seemed to paint on its own – and no, he didn’t use magic for that – as he stood before it, letting the ink form the stories that he would never dare tell.

He isn’t strictly successful, but he does have his little group of fans and critics that like him, and he does make a decent amount of money selling his work on art galleries.

He lives in a humble flat, though, and doesn’t own many things. But he doesn’t care, and he lets himself be content, if not happy.

Never truly happy.

***

Life goes on. Heavy and sometimes a little too much for Merlin’s old psyche, but it does, and Merlin follows.

It does get easier when Merlin learns that Will is back. Even though it hurts thinking that he might not ever see his Mum (and his Dad) again, the joy of having his old friend back is so big that when he finds him, completely by accident on the way to his favourite coffee shop, he can barely hold back the urge to hug him as the young man (he is a little older than Merlin remembers him— but he’s just fine with it. It means he’s _alive_ ) asks for his help with some heavy portfolios he’s carrying.

From then on they fall into an easy, though strong, friendship— just like before. And Merlin is more than happy to know that Will hasn’t lost his dad in this life.

They become the pillar in each other’s life. Except that this time, Will is a lawyer instead of a farming boy, and he becomes Merlin’s most trusted critic on his art, instead of being the master mind of their mischiefs in Ealdor. Merlin becomes his arms to hold on to when a case seems impossible to win— which isn’t that far from what he’d done before.

And like that, as times passes, Merlin begins to hope again.

***

And then one evening, when he’s finished another piece and is staring at it from afar, thinking what it could possibly need to be _really_ finished (and seriously, Will makes so much fun of him for never being satisfied with anything he paints), that he feels a tug on his chest.

At first he thinks it’s just a cramp and lets it go, but then it repeats, stronger and more painful, and Merlin grabs at his chest with a confused expression.

What the _hell?_

It stops after a while, the tug; but in its place stays a lingering sensation. Like a rumble, a tickling that he can’t shake off.

He goes to the doctor but the man says it’s nothing and sends him home with a bottle of pills that Merlin’s painfully aware of being placebo.

He tries to shrug it off as he gets on the tube back home, but the feeling doesn’t fade. 

***

It’s not until the next morning that he finds an explanation.

A little sleep deprived from the weird sensation and certainly irritated, dawn finds him sitting on his favourite kitchen chair (the one with the cushion that Will gave to him for his last birthday on it) as he sips on his coffee, absently thinking of all the paint bottles and brushes he has to replace. Other thoughts keep filling his head then, like how he still has to pay the electric bill and that Will had said something about meeting at the pub on Friday.

And then, something is said on the television – the one he keeps on during his morning ritual to fill up the silence – that makes him stop in his tracks.

“…pregnant. The Duchess is pregnant!” An overly excited, painfully British reporter announces at the camera, standing right outside the Palace.

When the words register in his brain, Merlin freezes.

He spills out the coffee and burns himself. Cursing, he stands up to grab a towel and dry himself, but stops midway when it all finally sinks in.

And everything, suddenly, makes sense.

And this time, when he breaks down and starts crying in the middle of his kitchen, coffee-stained and sore from the burn, the only thing filling his heart is pure, suffocating gratitude.

***

They give the baby a ridiculous name— George. Merlin can’t help but laugh at it, and Will laughs with him, if not for the same reasons.

(Arthur would _hate_ that name.)

Merlin spends most of his time on the internet until the first pictures come out, and then he spends hours bawling his eyes out when he finally _sees him_. The tug in his chest is stronger now, but it no longer hurts. Instead, it feels like a gentle pull, like Arthur’s taken him by the hand and is saying, “come to me. I’m here.”

Merlin drags one finger through his screen, over the baby’s giggling face, and smiles through his tears.

***

Of course, Merlin has to wait.

But it’s okay. He’s gotten good at waiting.

***

The years go by slower than ever and Merlin can feel himself growing anxious, wondering. Always wondering.

_(Are you okay?_

_Do you need me?_

_When will I get to hold you again?)_

But he knows, deep inside, that he needs to keep waiting. And he tells himself that it’s okay, that he can handle a few more years.

***

And it turns out, he does.

Arthur – George – turns sixteen on a bright summer morning and the whole country is celebrating. Merlin has worked up enough willpower over the years to stop himself from bursting through the doors of the Palace and demand see him in the instant, but it grows weaker as each year passes and _George_ looks more and more like his Arthur, all blond-and-blue-eyes glory along with a cheeky, charming smile.

But Merlin holds back, with all he has left. Because Arthur doesn’t need him, not yet. He is happy, safe and healthy. He has two parents that love him like he always deserved (Merlin doesn’t dwell on what might’ve happened to Uther— he doesn’t care. He hopes he’s burning in hell, though), and he loves his sister Isabella (Merlin had been surprised when he realized that the baby girl the Duchess had given birth a year after Arthur had been Morgana, and more than a little weary, but after years he’s accepted that in this lifetime, Morgana was good. Like she was always meant to be.

He had also been surprised, but immensely grateful, when he found out that, even though with different names, the knights were all back, along with Gwen, and that they were the Prince’s best friends. He is glad, that Gwen had been born to a good family. And he is sure that she is as sweet as she had been all those years ago. He still doesn’t know where Gaius is, though, but a part of him thinks --or rather, _knows_ \-- that maybe he’s not coming back. He left peacefully and happy, with Merlin at his side, and after everything, Merlin admits, that even if it breaks his heart, he’s glad his friend got his deserved rest.) 

But the thing is, Arthur is happy and well.

However, he _will_ need him, soon. Merlin can feel it, in the earth, the water and the wind. 

In his _veins_.

Magic has started to react to _something_ ; a magic that had been in a state of almost sleep since Arthur had been gone, all those eternities ago.

But now it’s awoken, and though Merlin fears, he also feels a tickling excitement flood through his old, tired blood.

_For when Albion’s need is greatest, Arthur will rise again._

And as Merlin watches the telly, his head resting on Will’s lap as his friend chews on some fish and chips and laughs about his own boring joke about royalty, he finds that he is truly, immensely _happy_.

Because Arthur’s face, all teenage excitement and awkward grins at the reporters who wish him a happy birthday— that face is everything he had been waiting for.

Merlin raises a paint-stained hand to his chest as the familiar warmth there grows, grows until he can taste it, sweet like a promise in his mouth.

And he smiles.

_Happy birthday, Sire._

_  
_***

End. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Feedback is greatly appreciated :).


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